1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hybrid wired and wireless communication device allowing wired and wireless communication, and more particularly, to a hybrid wired and wireless communication device capable of automatically setting an operating mode according to a wired or wireless communication environment, and a wired and wireless communication method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A hybrid wired and wireless communication device includes both of a wired communication module and a wireless communication module in order to communicate by wire and wirelessly with other communication devices. Here, wireless communication operating modes of the wireless communication module are largely divided into an infrastructure mode and an ad-hoc mode. The ad-hoc mode is also referred to as a peer-to-peer mode.
FIG. 1 illustrates a network in the infrastructure mode. The network includes wired communication devices 30, 32, and 34, wireless communication devices 38 and 40, and an access point (AP) 36.
In FIG. 1, for wireless communication, the wireless communication devices 38 and 40 are wirelessly linked to the AP 36 and communicate with the wired communication devices 30, 32, and 34 via the AP 36. Meanwhile, the wired communication devices 30, 32, and 34 communicate by wire with one another. As described above, a mode in which a communication device does not directly communicate with another wired or wireless communication device, but instead communicates with another wired or wireless communication device via the AP 36 constructed on a wired local area network (LAN) 39 is referred to as the infrastructure mode.
FIG. 2 illustrates a network in the ad-hoc mode. The network includes wireless communication devices 50, 52, and 54.
In FIG. 2, for wireless communication, the wireless communication devices 50, 52, and 54 directly and wirelessly communicate with one another without using a wireless relay device such as the AP 36 shown in FIG. 1. As described above, a mode in which a communication device directly and wirelessly communicates with another communication device without requiring relay of, for example, the AP 36, is referred to as the ad-hoc mode.
A communication device shown in FIG. 1 or FIG. 2 may be a personal computer (PC), a notebook computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a server, or a peripheral device such as a printer, a scanner, or a video camera.
Wireless communication operating modes, the infrastructure mode and the ad-hoc mode, are set and operated according to a user's option. Conventionally, it is very inconvenient for a user to manually change the wireless communication operating mode of a hybrid wired and wireless communication device. In addition, a user who is not familiar with a computer may feel uncomfortable in changing the wireless communication operating mode.
Meanwhile, when hybrid wired and wireless communication devices are connected to a wired communication network and are in the ad-hoc mode, wired communication can be performed by wired communication modules and wireless communication can also be performed by wireless communication modules. However, when the hybrid wired and wireless communication devices connected to the wired communication network are in the infrastructure mode, data received and transmitted by an AP is transmitted to the wired communication devices 30, 32, and 34 and the wireless communication devices 38 and 40 through the wired LAN 39 and is also transmitted to the wired communication devices 30, 32, and 34 and the wireless communication devices 38 and 40 wirelessly. In other words, the hybrid wired and wireless communication devices redundantly transmit or receive the same data by wire and wirelessly in the infrastructure mode. Accordingly, a hybrid wired and wireless communication device uses only the wire transmitted and received data that has less transmission errors than the wirelessly received data and deletes the wirelessly transmitted and received data. Consequently, redundant data transmission and reception wastes resources of a network environment. Moreover, since the same data is received redundantly, deletion of duplicate data is required, which results in a waste of power. The waste of the resources of the network environment and the waste of power cause the performance of a hybrid wired and wireless communication device to deteriorate.